oneworld82

How much better is CX F compared to C? I have availability on F on my flight and dunno whether to upgrade to F or stay C

golfingboy

Trust me, miles.... Shell out the extra 20-40K miles, you won't regret it.

mikelat

Better enough to be well worth it! Did CX F this past October and it was at least equal to my QF A380F. Better in some aspects, lesser in others, but overall both were such that I didn't feel like I'd have a better value by going with C instead.

Although this is an over-simplification:
Y - You're just another passenger
C - They address you individually. Respond if called/asked. Not too pro-active.
F - They serve you individually, ask your preferences, anticipate what you want/need. On one of my flights it was a 1:1 ratio of FA:F pax, that was great service.

Just booked round trip SEA-BKK on CX in F for next December for a week and a half of diving and exploring. Didn't even consider C

JasonDelta

CX F is truly a transcendent experience. I could have stayed on the plane for another flight across the Pacific when I returned from a trip last year. For the LAX-HKG/HKG-LAX flights on a 777, there were always two FAs. Seemed like it was the model to have one veteran and one rookie, but either way the service was incredible and the food outstanding. The only concern is that it will ruin you for any other type of flying. Hardly anything will compare... It's totally worth the 140k miles though! ^

Interesting observation though - out of the two times I've flown CX F, only once did the FA crew come by and personally thank a passenger in F as a team. As this was my first time flying CX F, I thought they'd eventually come and thank me. But they didn't. Just one guy. I'm guessing they know who the paying customers are...

dvo1029

While the Asia Miles site is great for determining CX award availability, it will not line up exactly with AS. In my experience, if Asia Miles shows a flight highlighted in red and states "only a few seats available" then these flights will not be available for AS redemption (I believe they save these for Asia Miles only). If you search and there is no red highlight around the flight then there is a 90+% chance you will be able to book this flight.

NotHome

I agree with the above, but have had excellent success using the BA awrds site to find availablity to AS mileage plan members.

Go F over for certain. It is a completely different experience on CX.

beta1607

I used the KVS tool with great success. If AS doesn't show the availability call back a few hour later as it may take some time for their availability to update.

andyman1080

hey, me too!

mikelat

If you can finagle it, I'd recommend trying for a 747 instead of a 777. I think they have more FAs on the 747 and, at least in 1 of my 2-way trips, F was much less that full. For me,on SFO-HKG, there were only 3 others in F. For my friends that I used my miles for they had a full F cabin SFO-HKG but only 4 total in F on HGK-SFO. With ratios like that you get the more than excellent service. Even with a full F cabin, I had very attentitive service. I also liked the 747 for being able to pick seats far forward and actually have a view pretty much out the nose cone.

Happy

Has anyone redeemed AS award on CX for a North America to Africa F?

My understanding is AS award allows one stopover - so that means we could have HKG as stopover on one direction enroute to JNB.

I hope some one on AS forum has inputs on this award.

pdxasflyer

Hi Happy,
We booked an award in CX F for 4 of us to Africa that we just completed this past March. One word: incredible. An amazing experience for sure. We nearly had the cabin to ourselves on two legs, and with 3 FA's, it was the best int'l F experience yet.

Book these awards very far in advance (330+) or you'll be waiting/checking availability a week to a week and a half out from your intended departure date, as CX only releases two award seats to all its members and partners when the flight first becomes available for booking. Once those are taken, CX won't release any more until about a week or two before the departure date.

They do allow a stop over, and we took advantage of this on the return, spending 10 days in China after 14 days in Africa. So, we got two continents, 3 countries (2 in Africa), and 4 segments in F on 747's and memories for 4 lifetimes for 140k each. Leaps and bounds, day and night - however you want to measure it - the best value for award travel on the planet IMHO. CX is amazing.

Happy

Thanks a lot for the feed back. I asked the North America (via HKG) - JNB route in CX forum - despite almost 200 views, only solicited one reply which is not only irrelevant to my questions, but made some strange comment about "you made very bad assumption on using ASMP to book CX F award to JNB" (paraphrase) when I mentioned that AS award chart has some interesting options, in that US-Africa in F is 140K, the same value as US-HKG...

I wholeheartedly agree that this is an amazing award.

Our tentative trip would be late 2013 or early 2014. However, given the logistics involved, I may need to start the planning process bit by bit now. Normally we do not plan far out ahead, our usual travels are often booked less than a few months out, usually 1 to 2 months out. I am afraid it would not work if we need to piece FLL-SEA, then SEA-SFO/LAX-HKG-JNB.

I wonder how AS handles the change on the date? Is it free or $100? and change of the routing, I assume would be $100.

We have a little issue because we are MIA/FLL based, so it would be a bit harder for us to change flights because I am sure FLL-SEA would be much harder to find award seats than say, PDX-SFO.

Anyway, I am quite familiar with CX F product and how it normally released for the US-HKG route - did 2 award trips using AA miles in Nov and Jan. Both trips were one direction in J and the other in F.

For the Nov 2011 trip it was ORD-HKG in J and HKG-YYZ in F booked about 5 months out - both directions were available at booking.

For the Jan 2012 trip it was LAX-HKG in J booked as a one-way booked between 6 and 3 weeks out. Originally was MIA-LAX-HKG in J, but about 1.5 weeks before departure SFO-HKG opened up lots of F seats so we switched to MIA-DFW-SFO-HKG just for the SFO-HKG in 747 F instead of the LAX-HKG in 777J. We even took an voluntarily downgrade on DFW-SFO due to no Saaver F seats but at T-24 AA revenue management finally moved us to F for the DFW-SFO segment. So we did fly F all the way with the paid F award price. ;-)
On the return we booked HKG-JFK in J about 3 weeks out. At the time CX had a system-wide upgrade that had caused a lot of ticketing issues. We were lucky that AA was able to ticket us because our booking was made just days before the CX system upgrade, and was not affected by the SNAFU. We decided just fly the existing reservation instead of wrestling the reticketing remotely from HKG even though we saw F opened up about a week to our departure.

gba

Yes, FLL-SEA may be the hardest part of the award to find. Coming from the East, I'd look at the other CX gateway cities (JFK, ORD, YYZ) and think about adding on a cheap paid ticket for simplicity.

Jeeves

I hate to say it but whenever people gush about amazing awards, they usually get devalued. CX is smart to limit 2 FC award seats per flight in advance and then hold back releasing more until closer to the departure date.

I've got my first CX F award trip this December. I hope to do another next year. Fingers crossed.

CDKing

For those looking for F, YYZ-HKG no longer has F cabin.